Where Thy Victory?
by The Lillie
Summary: "You made him cus you wanted to be human, right? This is being human. You screw up your whole life long, and then you die, and you stay dead, and your kids clean up after you." / We used to think that if, somehow, Rose Quartz were able to come back, it would-somehow-be a joyous resurrection.
1. Reveries

_Christ The Lord Is Risen Today - words by Charles Wesley_

_Love's redeeming work is done,_

_Fought the fight, the vict'ry won._

_Jesus' agony is o'er;_

_Darkness veils the earth no more..._

_Lives again our glorious King;_

_Where, O death, is now thy sting?_

_Once He died our souls to save,_

_Where thy victory, O grave?_

* * *

_Mom? Mama, come on out._

_Mom, come look. Come see what I did._

* * *

Rose Quartz was not technically conscious. She wasn't aware of her surroundings, couldn't count time passing, couldn't quite remember the last thing that had happened to her, couldn't think of any specific words or feelings. And, of course, she didn't have a form. She was just the stone at this point, waiting to regenerate. Deciding how to look. Any changes to her hair or outfit, perhaps? It'd been a long time since she'd changed her dress, she knew that much.

She mulled over things for a while, then took a while more to implement her choices. She added long sleeves to the dress and raised the neckline a little. She traced a yellow outline around the star-shaped cutout that would surround her gem.

It was funny, she had enough thought to realize, that she was going to be wearing yellow. It wasn't unheard of for a Gem to tweak her palette a little on reforming, but where was the yellow coming from?

The dormant gem began to glow pink, then shone white. It rose into the air and drew the white into shapes—torso, head, limbs, hair, clothing.

Rose's bare feet touched a hardwood floor, and the hem of her dress fell around them. She opened her eyes.

Amethyst, to her left, hands balled into fists in front of her chest. Pearl, right, hands clasped tight to her mouth. Garnet, center, hands limp and empty at her sides.

They stood in silence.

Rose blinked. "How long has it been?"

"_Whaddyou mean, how long's it been?!" _Amethyst suddenly screeched, throwing her arms out.

Rose recoiled a little, startled. Garnet put a hand on Amethyst's shoulder.

"No," Pearl said. She shook her head, not moving her eyes from Rose or her hands from her mouth. "No, no, no no no no no."

"What's the matter?" Rose furrowed her brow and looked to Garnet.

Garnet stepped forward. "Rose."

"Yes?"

"Tell us the last thing you remember."

Rose gave an uncomfortable half-chuckle, pushing her shoulders forward. "Well, it's all a little fuzzy, to be honest. I know I was with you three, and—"

Her head snapped up, her eyes wide.

"Where's Greg?"

Pearl sank to her knees. Amethyst shook, a tear rolling to the corner of the eye that wasn't covered by her hair. Only Garnet stood still.

"You've been gone," Garnet said, "for fifty-two years."

Rose stepped back. "What? No, I can't have—" She shook her head. "What happened?"

Amethyst made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a scoff. "Do you seriously not remember anything?!"

"No, I—" Rose brought one hand up to her head and laid the other on her gem. She was remembering something, now that she thought about it—

Yes, a memory, hers. A decision. More memories, still hers, but not quite—Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, and—

She looked up.

"Where's Steven?"


	2. Legacies

_Carry That Weight - Jennifer Hudson_

_I never give you my pillow_

_I only sent you my invitations_

_And in the middle of the celebrations_

_I break, I break, I break down…_

_Boy, you're gonna carry that weight_

_Carry that weight a long time_

_Boy, you're gonna carry that weight_

_Carry that weight a long time_

* * *

In a little steel kettle painted black, water was just about to be the right temperature for tea. A green ceramic mug was on the counter next to the stove, the teabag already sitting at the bottom of it. The kitchen lights were off; the house was lit only by the streetlights and fading sunlight outside.

The water boiled, and the kettle whistled. The woman making the tea strode across the floor and laid the book she'd been reading beside her mug. She took the kettle off the stove as she poured the water into the mug.

_Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt._

The woman slid her phone out of her pocket.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Mom, it's Alex. Has Lisa called you yet?"

The mother picked up her mug of tea and tucked her book under her arm to return to the couch.

"She hasn't contacted me at all since the funeral," she said.

"I've been trying to get her to call you. How are you doing?"

"Same as the last time you called."

"Was that yesterday or the day before?"

She grabbed a napkin to place the teabag on when it was done steeping and made her way back into the living room. "It was both." After flicking on a lamp, she sat on the couch and reopened her book.

"Oh." Alex chuckled a little. "Well, I guess I just really want to make sure you're doing alright. Between Dad and getting used to being back on Earth and Lisa being a flake—"

"She's not being a flake. She's just busy with her own life. And I'm fine, really."

Alex audibly exhaled through their nose, louder than they probably intended; their mother flinched away from the phone for a moment.

"Look, Mom, I know you still feel like—"

_Knock-knock-knock._

Alex continued to talk, unaware that their mother had pulled the phone away again and was looking at the door. She set her book down on the end table beside her tea.

"I'm going to have to call you back, sweetie," she said, standing.

"What? Mom, I just—"

"I've got a visitor."

"Have you been expecting someone?"

"I'll call you back in a little bit, okay?"

Without giving her child a chance to respond, the woman hit 'end call' and put her phone back in her pocket. The person at the door knocked again, the same triple rhythm. The woman turned the knob and pulled the door open.

On the front step stood another woman, bending her head slightly to be seen through the doorway. Her hair was enormous and curly pink, and her dress was long and white. A star-shaped hole outlined with yellow revealed a reddish-pink gemstone in the center of her belly.

The woman inside stared at the visitor. Her wide-eyed face, her familiar gem, her face again. The visitor stared back. The lined eyes, the graying hair, the eyes again.

"Connie?" asked Rose.

"Um, yes. Oh my stars. I mean—oh my God. I'm—" Connie ran a hand over her hair. "Yes, I'm Connie Maheswaran. It's nice—it's an honor to meet you, Rose Quartz."

Rose smiled, but it was small. "It's good to meet you, too."

Connie put her hands in her pockets. "Can I make you a cup of tea?"

Rose's smile grew a little. "That would be lovely."

Connie opened the door wider and beckoned her visitor in.

"I'm sorry if this is awkward at all, I'm just...a little shocked." Connie poured some still-hot water from the kettle into the mug she'd gotten out for Rose. The kitchen light was on now, and Rose was sitting peacefully at the table—though the chair was obviously far too small for her. Connie crossed to the other chair and sat herself down.

"To be honest, we all thought for sure you were gone forever," Connie explained. "The Gems speculated for a while that you might come back after Steven...was gone, but I never did. I definitely never expected you to come to my door, knowing my name."

"How did it happen?" Rose asked. "Fifty-two can't possibly be old enough."

"No, but it was still a very human way to go," Connie replied after a sip of tea. "Stroke. Blood clot to the brain. His second—the first one was when he was around thirty. The doctors weren't able to figure out what caused this one exactly before he disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

Connie nodded. "Right after his heart stopped, his—the gem flashed really bright, and when the light faded, he was gone. Our guess is that the bits of him that weren't organic retreated into the stone like a regular Gem, and the rest got burned away by the light."

She spoke the words with an air of detachment, as if it wasn't the scariest thing that had ever happened to her.

Then she shrugged. "That was three weeks ago. The gem was just dormant after that, until…"

"I just reformed a few hours ago."

Connie tilted her head to the side. "What made you want come to me?"

"You're the one Steven had the strongest connection with, besides his father and the Crystal Gems. And I can't talk with any of them." Rose ran a fingertip along the rim of her cup, gaze distant.

"Technically, I'm a Crystal Gem, too," Connie replied, half-smirking briefly before sobering. "You have some of his memories, then?"

"Blurry, faded feelings, mostly. Just enough to know who you are." She glanced up. "You knew who I was right away, too."

Connie's half-smirk returned. "You're pretty unmistakable. You look a lot like Steven. And obviously even among other rose quartzes, you're unique."

"You've met others?"

"We freed all the ones the Diamonds had bubbled." Connie lifted her tea to her lips. "They're living all over Homeworld and different systems now."

Rose frowned. "Don't tell me about Homeworld."

"It's not a bad place anymore. You'd hardly recognize it now," Connie said. "It's really incredible how much we've been able to change in just less than forty years—"

"It can't have changed that much," Rose murmured.

"No, it has!" Connie's grip tightened a little on the handle of her mug. "They've stopped colonizing inhabited planets, there's no more Gems owning other Gems, attitudes are so much more open about choice and individuality, and Steven taught—"

Her voice gave out from under her, without warning, and she stopped.

Strange. So far she hadn't had any trouble with thinking about him or saying his name. What made this instance different, made her throat close up and her eyes sting?

"Things are going to be a lot harder without him," she realized in a whisper.

Rose's hand touched Connie's, soft and light, and Connie blinked up at her. Her skin didn't feel like a human's, full of folds and pores and imperfections; it was completely smooth, with a velvety coolness that seemed almost like a real rose.

"Tell me about Steven," Rose entreated. "Tell me about yourself and him."

"Um. Well—" Connie laughed to disguise an almost-sob. "I met him when I was almost eleven; he saved us from some falling rocks and got us trapped in a bubble. He didn't know how to work his powers very well back then." She sniffed and shook her head. "It was all so amazing to me for such a long time, everything about magic and Gems and you...I thought by now I'd've gotten used to everything, but I'm still sort of astounded that you're here."

Rose chuckled and shifted her hand around Connie's to a more natural position, gently holding thin warm brown fingers to fat pale pink palm. "I think I'm the same way about humans."

"Steven was the same way about everything. Everything he saw made him so excited. He was always falling in love with the whole cosmos."

"He was in love with you."

Connie had been smiling up until this point. Now she wasn't. She wasn't quite frowning, but…

"For a while," she said. "We got married in our twenties, had two kids—"

Rose gasped loudly. "You had kids!"

"Oh my stars, the kids, yes." Connie stood, pulling her hand out of Rose's, suddenly distracted from whatever she had been about to say. "They need to meet you. They would _love _to meet you."

"I would love to meet them!" Rose agreed.

Connie dug her phone out of her pocket. A text message from Alex was already on the screen; she didn't bother to read it, instead tapping on the contact name to call them.

"I can drive us over to Lisa's house and meet Alex there," she said as the phone rang. "We'll probably have to put the top down for you to fit in the car—"

"Hey, Mom, what's—"

"Alex! Hi! How soon can you be at Lisa's?"

"What? Uh, pretty soon, I guess. What for?"

Connie grinned over at Rose. "I want to introduce you two to your grandmother."

* * *

Lisa's home was small and cozy-looking; one story, red brick walls, brown shingled roof, dark green door. There was no car in the driveway before Connie pulled hers in, but a bicycle leaned against the house.

"Our daughter lives here with her partner, Kelly, but it looks like Kelly's at work," Connie narrated, looking around as she turned off the car. "She's a computer programmer. And Lisa graduated from nursing school a little bit ago. Alex lives closer to the beach—they've been running It's A Wash since Greg retired."

She nearly skipped up the porch stairs, Rose rising beside her a little more calmly, and knocked on the door. Quickly it opened to reveal a tall, brown-skinned twenty-something-year-old—though not quite as brown as Connie, nor quite as tall as Rose—with bushy black hair and a jaw lightly shadowed with stubble. Their automatic smile of greeting turned into an O of shock when they saw the women on the step.

"Hi, honey," Connie grinned. She turned to Rose. "Rose, meet your younger grandkid: Alexandrite Laramie Maheswaran-Universe. Alex, this is…"

Alex snapped their heels together, shoulders back, and saluted. But not a human salute—a salute with their arms held against their chest, elbows crossed, wrists out, fingertips together, in the shape of a diamond.

Rose's smile fell to its death.

"Rose Quartz," Alex said. "It's an honor."

"Please don't do that," Rose said bluntly.

Alex glanced down at their arms, then awkwardly dropped them to their sides. "Right. Sorry. I just—" Their eyebrows arched, and they smiled for a half-second. "I don't know what to do, I guess."

"Where's Lisa?" asked Connie.

Alex jerked their head a little in gesture. "In the kitchen making hot chocolate. I, uh—I didn't tell her you were coming."

"Why not?"

"Well—"

"Who's at the door?"

Alex grimaced a little over their shoulder at the new voice, then gestured for Rose and Connie to follow them into the house. "It's Mom. And…"

The trio stopped at the kitchen threshold. A woman with curly hair cut short above her round face stood there, focused on pulling a mug out of the microwave. She shot a quick half-glance at them. "Why did—"

She jolted hard, glanced again, mug dropping. It shattered and sent cocoa splattering.

Her lip curled, eyes flaming.

The next thing Rose knew was an explosion of pain in her face, and then in her rump as she crashed to the floor.

"_Lisa!"_

She squinted open her eyes, a hand jumping to her already-swelling cheek. Lisa stood before her, fists clenched tight at her sides, teeth bared in broiling rage.

"_Fuck_, I've wanted to do that for a long time," she growled.

Late, Rose processed what had just happened. Her granddaughter—a skinny almost-human whose head was barely level with Rose's chest, _her granddaughter_—had full-on decked her in the face, with all the power and fury of a Homeworld warrior.

"So you're back, huh?" Lisa spat. "You ruin everybody's lives for six thousand years, make your son try to fix it all, and now that he's _dead _you can just come back and reap the benefits, yeah?"

"That... actually hurt," Rose marveled. "How did you hit that hard?"

"I got your Gem strength, buster, don't mess with me." Lisa started to surge forward again, but Alex was quickly behind her, holding her back by the arm.

"Lisa, calm down," Connie urged. "Yes, she's back, and I thought you'd all want to meet each other, but if there's a problem here—"

"'If there's a problem?' Mom, you're so dense!"

Rose pushed to her feet, a hand still on her cheek. "Wait, Lisa."

Lisa tensed, fist clenched, and fell silent.

"Please," Rose said gently. "Let's sit down and talk. I want to hear everything there is to know about you, and your father."

"As if I'd-"

"Lisa."

Alex's voice was low and sharp. Their expression was calm, neutral; their hand was still on her arm.

"Fine," she said. "The table's over there."

She pointed brusquely. These chairs, too, were too small for Rose-except for one, over in the corner, a big blue polka-dotted armchair. Rose started toward it, but was stopped by Lisa clearing her throat.

"That was his chair," Lisa said, arms crossed, eyes down. "My dad's."

Rose looked again at the armchair and managed a bright smile. "How tall did he grow up to be?"

"A little taller than you." Lisa pulled out one of the wooden dining room chairs for herself and dropped into it. Connie and Alex sat on either side of her, their movements quiet, almost sheepish by comparison.

Rose took the seat across from Lisa and did her best to stay balanced on it without bumping the table at all.

"He bought that chair when Lisa and Kelly first moved in together," Connie took it on herself to explain. "He was so excited for them to have kids, so he could sit there and then they'd climb into his lap and tell him what they wanted for their birthday."

Alex chuckled at the memory. "He was just excited to have grandkids in general. Even though he never really had his own grandparents, he was really determined to be a good one himself."

"He never had one of his own parents, and he managed to be good at that," Lisa said with a glare at Rose.

It was an accusation. Rose clenched her heart around the stab of guilt and opened her mouth to defend herself. "I-"

"Actually, you know what's ironic?" Lisa said, sitting up straighter and grinning humorlessly. "Dad never took after you, but you know who did? My mom!"

Oh. The accusation had shifted.

Connie blinked and recoiled a little. "What?"

"Yep! She honestly should have never had anything to do with you, but she really did a fantastic job taking up your legacy of shitty family skills."

"Lisa—"

"I mean, from the child neglect to the infidelity—"

Connie's cheeks flamed. "Lisa!"

"What's extra ironic, she did that one kind of reverse of you! She left her perfectly good human husband to go after a pretty pearl!"

"Lisa Parvani, that's enough!" Connie snapped. She hurriedly turned to Rose, flustered. "The divorce was already in process when I met her—it was just all complicated, Lisa's just been upset—"

She was cut off by Lisa slamming her hands down onto the table. Her beaming sarcasm was gone. "I didn't ask for this. I didn't give any of you permission to be in my house."

"You can't just keep pushing us away," Alex pushed back. "We're all grieving too, if you just—"

"Don't talk to me about grieving!" Lisa shouted, standing. "None of you even cared about Dad at all!"

She shoved her chair to the side and took off toward the back door. Alex rose to chase after her, but Connie raised a hand to motion them down.

"Let her have some space," she said.

"We've been giving her space the whole time! It hasn't worked!"

"We just put a lot on her at once," Connie reasoned. "If I was her, I'd—"

"Yeah, but you're _not _her." Alex reached and briefly squeezed Connie's hand. "Trust me. Space is the last thing she needs right now."

Connie hesitated, but then didn't protest as Alex left. She and Rose watched them go.

Rose turned her head, and finally spoke.

"Divorce?"

After a moment, Connie sighed. "It's not as bad as it sounds. Or, at least, I didn't think it was. Lisa was eight when it happened. I guess I never totally realized how much it affected her." She folded her hands tightly in her lap. "It's just...we were friends first. Our friendship was always first. And we always loved each other and we were always partners in everything, but...I feel like we only started a family because we felt like we were supposed to. As we got older, everything just became a strain on us. I was busy being ambassador to Homeworld, he wanted to stay on Earth as much as possible...we disagreed a _lot _about how to run the house and raise the kids. So after we split, the two of us and Stevonnie got a lot stronger, and it seemed like the kids understood."

She shrugged, gaze and posture sinking.

"I'd been so worried about it being the right choice beforehand that I never really thought more about it afterward. I guess it sort of blinded me to how Lisa really felt."

Rose was silent, letting the story sink in. Stevonnie—that was the name of Steven and Connie's fusion. They were able to fuse. Her son was able to fuse with a human.

But...they split. How could their fusion become stronger when they were apart?

She chuckled darkly. "Human relationships really are complicated."

"Things did seem a lot simpler with Mattie," Connie reminisced, a faint blush rising again to her cheeks. "The pearl Lisa mentioned—that's what we called her. She's a matte grey. We were together for a long time." She sniffed and looked up. "But I think that's just because of _who _we were, not what we were. Every relationship is unique, and they're complicated for humans and Gems." An eyebrow raised. "Not excluding you."

"Me?"

"Lisa was pretty out of line with what she yelled, but she was right about the infidelity for you," Connie said. "Pearl was in love with you. And she wanted to be together, just the two of you, but you kept chasing humans without even asking how she felt about it. I'm not saying it to try to accuse you or anything. Just to point out that...maybe we're not that different."

Rose looked down, folding her hands in her lap. "Maybe."

After a moment, Rose slowly, quietly got up from her seat and headed after the kids, leaving Connie alone at the table. When she opened the door, Alex looked up at her; but Lisa, face buried in her sibling's shoulder, stayed down.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Don't talk to me," said Lisa, voice muffled by Alex's body.

"I don't want to talk to you," Rose replied. "But I was hoping you'd be willing to talk to me."

A _hmph. _"About what?"

"About your father." Rose gave a flat, sideways smile. "I never got a chance to know him. But I can see that you loved him very much."

"Yeah, that's why I hate you very much."

"You're not helping yourself here," Alex whispered.

Lisa began to sit up, and Alex released her, keeping a steady hand on her back. Rose sat down beside her on the step, sweeping her skirts out of the way.

"You wrecked everything," Lisa said, eyes on the ground. "My dad could've been a totally normal human guy with a totally normal human mom. My mom could've been a totally normal human. I could've been a totally normal human! And instead we're just—I mean, I love Garnet and Amethyst and Pearl, but all this fucking _Gem stuff._" She sneered. "It's one thing to be the kid at school with superpowers, but then there was always Mom being across the galaxy and old loyalists attacking our house and Dad's vintage collection of mommy issues that he never really got over, and it's all—" A high, pained laugh cut into her voice. "Literally all your fault!

"You had a child, and you knowingly abandoned him. You intentionally left him alone, and you intentionally left him with all the hurt you knew you caused and you intentionally left him to clean up after you. And no matter how hard he tried, he could never shake that his entire life."

Rose bit her tongue, lips tight together, and looked to Alex. "Is this true?"

"I mean, you left a heck of a legacy," Alex said, voice low. "As a kid Dad struggled a lot with wanting to be just like you, and then wanting to be nothing like you. But by the time we were born—we grew up on stories of how great you were. It wasn't until we got older that we started to realize...I don't know. There were definitely some bad effects on him."

"And now he's gone."

Lisa's voice cracked. Her gaze had lifted, but now seemed even more distant.

"And we have to carry that legacy now. Without him."

"But I'm back now," Rose tried. "I can carry my own—"

"No. You made him cus you wanted to be human, right? This is being human." Lisa stood up and looked down at Rose, eyes hard. "You screw up your whole life long, and then you die, and you stay dead, and your kids clean up after you."

She turned around without another word and went back into the house. The door closed with a hard _smack._

Rose flinched at the sound, but then forced herself to relax.

"For the record, I don't think Dad really resented you that much," Alex said after a moment. "At least, not consciously. He had problems with it, of course, but he was a grown man. He could handle it."

"Then why is Lisa so upset with me?"

Alex clucked their tongue. "I dunno. She never really wanted anything to do with Gem stuff. Ironically, since she's the one who got all your powers."

Rose brightened a little, surprised. "Really?"

"Yeah. I mean they're not as strong as you and Dad had but—" Alex grinned and started listing off on their fingers. "She's got floating, healing tears, extra strength, some plant controlling stuff, and I can float a little and dreamwalk and do this." They strained a little, eyes squinting, and then the tip of their index finger popped into the tiny head of a calico cat, smiling and mewing.

"Oh!" Instinctively Rose beamed and gently scratched the cat's crown.

"That's about it, though. And I can't really control 'em that well." They shook their hand out, and when they brought it back the cat was gone.

"I think it's wonderful," Rose said. "I think _you're _wonderful. Both of you."

Alex's smile tempered a little. They leaned forward, elbows on knees.

"She's in pain, more than anything. She's sad and she feels alone," they said. "She's always been a lot closer to Dad than I was."

"But you miss him, too," Rose replied.

"'Course I do." They shrugged. "We're different people, I guess. We deal with things different ways."

"Then what can I do for her?"

Alex blew out a long breath, staring off into the distance. "I don't know." They shook their head. "Honestly, at this point, there might not be anything you can do."

Rose pursed her lips.

The door opened again, and Rose looked up. Connie slid out and quietly pushed the door closed with her back.

"Kelly just got home," Connie said. "We should go."


End file.
